Fish Extender?? What the heck is a Fish Extender!?!?!?

º Fish Extender?? What the heck is a Fish Extender!?!?!? º

Let’s start out with exactly what Fish we are talking about. On the Disney Cruise Line Ships there is a “Fish” hung on the wall next to every cabin door. This fish is there to hold messages that the crew and/or friends wish to leave for you.

Some creative people wished to be able to leave more than just one small note for their friends (old and new) who were with them on the ship. They also wanted to encourage people to make new friends on the cruise. Then decided they needed to “extend” the fishes ability to hold things. These creative people came up with the idea of hanging pockets from the fish!

Various Disney fan sites have Fish Extender Meet & Great Groups. We chose the DisBoards.com website to join for our cruise. All you do is sign up on the thread for the date and ship you will be on. By doing so you agree to exchange gifts with the rest of the group while on your cruise! This is a great way to make new Disney friends while on your Disney Cruise and add to the fun and excitement while getting ready! It also gives you fun memories to bring home. You keep your eye on the thread and they will post how many cabins (and the cabin numbers) are in your group and how many people are in each cabin. They will post the ages of the people in each cabin and if there are any special celebrations. This information is important to have before you leave on your cruise. This way you can plan what to take to leave for each cabin/person. They will also post your assigned day to drop your gifts in the groups Fish Extenders. You can ask for a particular day if you wish if nobody else has already asked for that day. Unless your group is really small (and they usually are not small) you will only be responsible for one or two days worth of gifts.

This is our Fish Extender and our decorated door. You don’t have to decorate your door but it adds to the fun! You can change your door decor each day if you wish and put special things up for special celebrations you are having while on the cruise. We put up a picture of Mickey and Minnie having a romantic evening on the beach in honor of our 31^st anniversary that we were celebrating. We also put up a picture of Minnie relaxing for my birthday. As you can see the Fish Extender is a simple set of pockets with a string to hang over your Fish. It is like an over the door shoe rack, with just one pocket wide and one pocket for each person or couple in the room.

Now what do you put in a Fish Extender? Anything you want!!!! You can make or purchase anything you wish! Just keep it family friendly! Here is what we gave. We gave the adults CD’s. One was of music you hear around the ship. The other is a collection of Disney music. For the kids we got pirate eye patches and ear rings (4 of each $1), pirate fake teeth (8 for $1), Bead Necklaces (8 for $1), plastic turtles (4 for .99 cents), plastic rings (8 for $1) along with a few other small items.

This is what we got in our Fish Extender. For the homemade items we got a Sipper Cup with DCL Graphic, Future Cruise Fund coin bank, Frig Magnet with date of cruise and Disney graphic, homemade book mark and candy. We also got things like laundry soap, clothes pins (some decorated to honor the cruise), Tide to go stain remover, travel size pack of Kleenex, Disney pens and pencils, Post Cards from the state the person who gave them is from and bandages. All of these were greatly appreciated!

We are already looking forward to our next cruise. We hope we get to go in about 2 years. We are starting to save Kool Aid plastic containers to turn into Future Cruise banks to give out. We are working on plans for magnets and other things as well. We know we will stick with the Pirate Themed items and are starting to stock them for the next cruise.

Here is some important information you may wish to have for making your Fish Extender. The space for hanging your Fish Extender is 9 inches wide. If you make your FE much wider than that it will stick out into the walkway. When you decorate your door do not use any tape! DCL has asked very nicely that no tape be used due to the damage it can cause. If you do use tape you may be charged for repair of the door. The door can hold magnets so everything you take to put on your door should be held on with magnets. If you print out a picture you can put it in a page protector and put pieces of magnet strip on the back. Some people put round magnets above their door number to turn it into a Icon Mickey. I even saw one that had Donald’s hat above the room number and his bill below! There were also doors with Minnie Ears and Bow around the number! The door number circle is 7 1/4 inches in diameter. Using this information you can make the correct size “ears”.

So are you going on a Disney Cruise and will you join a Fish Extender Group??